16 VOICES FROM THE WOODLANDS. 



summer suns affect our verdure. When deciduous trees 

 begin to lose their leaves, or when the woodlands are varied 

 with autumnal tints, we still look green, and embellish 

 many a rough bank or streamlet edge, from whence even 

 the lingering crane's-bill and eye-bright have departed. 

 But would you see us in all our beauty and utility, go to 

 the wild solitudes of Lapland, and retrace the haunts which 

 Linnaeus has so well described. 



Lapland mothers know well how to value the grey bog- 

 moss, or its elegant variety of a beautiful peach-colour, of 

 which the capsules burst with a crackling noise, making 

 the passer-by to start and look around, fearful lest the 

 herbage should have suddenly caught fire. They tastefully 

 decorate, with this valuable species, the cradles of their 

 infants, and also wrap them in it as an excellent defence 

 from cold. 



Nor less valuable to the natives of those sterile regions 

 is our brother, the common hair-moss ; and rarely has the 

 goodness of the Great Creator been more wonderfully 



